


Change of Pace

by kay_obsessive



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fugue Feast (Dishonored), Pre-Canon, The Golden Cat (Dishonored), Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 19:34:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_obsessive/pseuds/kay_obsessive
Summary: She really is quite beautiful, with a confident, aggressive charm that he is sure appeals to many. He can see why the Madame would have been willing to take on the risks of her past when desperation finally drove her here. She must turn quite a profit, despite the many scars hidden beneath her makeup. Most men wouldn’t know to look for that.Daud once saw her drive a knife through a nobleman’s thigh in the alley behind the Golden Cat, after she pulled him off one of the younger girls and shoved him out the door before any of the guards even had a chance to react. She wiped the blood from her hands like it was nothing.“I have a proposition for you,” he says.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ahaha, oops?
> 
> So, this started as a few snippets in response to the prompt "Hooker AU" that were originally posted as part of [A House Built on Secrets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11581818/chapters/26026965), but it's grown a little out of control, so I'm making it its own fic. The first chapter is almost all stuff that's already posted, just edited a little to flow together better, so if you've read the relevant chapters from A House Built on Secrets, it will be familiar to you. Chapter 2 is entirely new stuff, and Chapter 3 will be too, once I get around to finishing that part.
> 
> Yeah, this is basically just straight up porn, hopefully with some interesting character bits mixed in. Enjoy!

“Haven’t seen you around before,” she says, with a calculated tilt of the head that lets her hair cascade appealingly over her shoulder. “New in town?”

Daud almost laughs. Strange the places his reputation does not follow him. “No, I’ve been here for some time.”

“Just new to the Cat, then?” she asks, moving closer. Her hands go to his chest, lips curling into a smile. “I’ll try to make a good first impression.”

She really is quite beautiful, with a confident, aggressive charm that he is sure appeals to many. He can see why the Madame would have been willing to take on the risks of her past when desperation finally drove her here. She must turn quite a profit, despite the many scars hidden beneath her makeup. Most men wouldn’t know to look for that.

Daud once saw her drive a knife through a nobleman’s thigh in the alley behind the Golden Cat, after she pulled him off one of the younger girls and shoved him out the door before any of the guards even had a chance to react. She wiped the blood from her hands like it was nothing.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says.

She laughs low in her throat and lets her hands slip downward. “I should hope so.”

Unexpectedly, his breath catches for a moment, and he swallows hard before speaking again. “Another proposition,” he corrects.

She tilts her head, less calculated this time. “Interesting,” she says. “Is this a paying proposition?”

“If I’m right about you, it will pay very well.”

The woman once known on her wanted posters as Billie Lurk laughs darkly. She leans in to kiss him, slowly and deeply. “Well, Daud,” she says as she pulls away, smirking when his eyebrows lift in subtle surprise, “I’m listening.”

Her hands don’t slow, creeping back up to grip his shoulders for balance as she climbs onto the chair with him.

“This isn’t what I came here for,” Daud says, though the protest probably loses something from the way his own hands go automatically to Billie’s hips as she settles herself on his lap.

Billie shrugs. “But it is what you paid for, and I don’t like owing people. You never know when or how they’re going to try to collect.” She tilts her head and smirks. “Besides, I’m curious what dirty little things the infamous Knife of Dunwall likes.”

Daud has had more than a few jealous wives and husbands hire him for killings at the Golden Cat, and the jobs often involved more details than he really needed to know. “Compared to your regular clients, I’m sure you’ll find me boring.”

She laughs, dipping her head to press her mouth against his neck. “That might be a nice change of pace,” she murmurs against his throat. Her hands slip from his shoulders and begin to work at the buttons of his shirt, moving methodically downward. She stops when she reaches his belt, letting her fingertips trail teasingly over the newly exposed skin just above. “You said you had a proposition for me?”

Daud closes his eyes and breathes deeply. “Yes,” he says, tightening his grip on her waist. Her undergarments are edged in lace, and he runs his fingers roughly along that delicate fabric. “I think you’d do better killing for me than continuing the work you do here.”

She lifts her head to frown at him, and he can feel a quiver of tension in her fingertips. “That’s a pretty different set of skills,” she says to him. “What makes you think I’d be any good at what you do?”

“Because I know who you are.” He presses one hand flat to her stomach, then slips it down beneath the lace. “Three years ago, the Grand Guard swarmed through Dunwall looking for a murderer, some mad gutter rat who had killed the duke’s son, but they never managed to track her down.” He grazes over the wet heat between her thighs, and she inhales sharply, fingernails digging into his hips. “She was clever enough to evade them for a while, and then she found a place to hide in plain sight. She changed her look, changed her name – what is it you’re calling yourself now? Meagan, was it? A much more common name than Billie Lurk.”

Her nails dig into his skin again, hard enough to come off like a warning, before she shifts and moves her hands back up to his shoulders. She rocks her hips forward, rubbing herself against the heel of his palm. “You know an awful lot,” she says, letting one hand slip back behind his neck.

Daud can hear the soft scrape of metal on wood by his ear, but Billie’s arm does not move again. He nods. “I know a great deal,” he says softly, leaning in like he’s passing on a secret. He shifts his hand, and his fingers slide inside her easily, slick and ready; the knuckle of his thumb presses hard against her clit. Billie’s eyes flutter briefly shut, and he enjoys the quiet noise that escapes her lips. “I know you spend your days serving clients you loathe,” he continues, fingers curling within her. “You swallow down your hate while you charm Dunwall’s wealthiest men and women, then dream of killing them like you did the duke’s son, wishing you could get away with it again.” 

Billie’s breath is hot and shallow against his throat, and her expression is mingled arousal and wariness. It’s more appealing to him than he would be willing to admit aloud. Her arm by his head suddenly tenses, and he reaches up quickly with his free hand to grab her wrist and pull it into view. She tightens her fingers around the handle of the short blade in her grip – a poorly made, decorative thing, but it would do the job against a less skilled opponent – and her dark eyes widen.

“If I had come here meaning to kill you,” Daud says, sliding his hand up and overtop of hers, “I would already be collecting payment for your corpse.”

Billie shudders and slowly loosens her grip on the blade, letting Daud slip it from her fingers. “Then what do you want from me?”

Daud trails the knife lightly down her body as he lets his hand come to rest at her thigh. The blade’s point settles just below the curve of her hip. “What I’ve already told you: I want you as one of my assassins.” He flexes the fingers of his other hand, drawing another sharp gasp from her lips. “I’ll train you to do it right, to kill quick and clean or slow and lingering, and the Watch will never come close to finding you.”

She rolls her hips, letting the tip of the blade press into her skin, drawing a bead of blood, and forcing Daud’s fingers deeper inside her. “And what do I get from this?” she asks, a little breathless, tightening her hands on his shoulders to brace herself as she moves. “A cut of the pay? I already earn enough coin to get by without putting myself back on all the city’s wanted posters.”

“I know it’s not the coin that interests you. We get paid to take down the rich and powerful that nobody else can touch. You fight for me, and you’ll be killing people like the ones who’ve hurt you.” He presses his thumb back to her clit, rubbing small, swift circles in time with the rocking of her hips. Her head tips back, eyes half-lidded, lips parted, and he leans in closer, voice rumbling in her ear as he promises, “You’ll have your payment in blood.”

Billie lets out a low groan, bucks her hips roughly forward, and then she is clenching and shuddering around his hand. Her nails dig sharply into his arms for a moment, and then the tension slips from her body. She lets her head fall to rest on his shoulder, breathing heavily against his neck. 

“Teach me to do what you do,” she says eventually, her lips moving against his skin, “and I’ll slit the throat of every damned noble in the city if you want.”

Daud smiles, satisfied. He slowly pulls his hand from her, trailing wet fingertips over her stomach. “Then we have a deal.”


	2. Chapter 2

The prickling heat low in Billie’s abdomen doesn’t fade quickly enough for her liking, arousal creeping back in eagerly as the pleasure fades.

It’s a rare thing for her to crave more. She does her job and does it well, enjoys it when she can, but she’s often more than ready to see the doors swing closed on her companions’ backs. But Daud’s offer echoes in her mind, a hint of bloodlust tangles with the more traditional kind, and she finds herself reaching for his belt. 

He puts his hands quickly over top of hers to stop their movement, though she can see the tell-tale ruddy flush of the skin around his neck. “We should leave now,” he says, voice impressively steady, considering. “Take you out of here and away from this district.”

Billie shakes her head. “This is peak time for the Golden Cat. Wait an hour or two, and it’ll be all but dead. Easy to creep out unnoticed.” Her mouth twists into a smirk. “I’m sure we can kill that much time.”

He stares at her for a moment and then slowly, very slowly, releases her hands. “You would know best.”

With a triumphant little grin, she returns to her work, quick fingers loosening his belt and unfastening the closures beneath. He’s already half-hard just from watching her come, and the soft, choked noise he makes when she strokes along his length pleases her greatly.

She slips off his lap and pulls him to his feet to better undress him, then sets his hands at her sides, letting him reach around to undo the lacing at her back and hook his fingers in her waistband, sliding her thin undergarments from her body and to the floor.

Despite his earlier reluctance, he’s the one to make the move toward the bed, grasping at her hips and lifting her briefly off her feet to set her on the mattress. The easy show of strength makes her giddy for a moment, startling a short laugh from her lips. So different from all the skinny, useless nobles she services every day. His rough, common hands slide up and over her body as he settles himself above her, coming back to rest at her hips.

He enters her with a quick thrust, easy with how wet she still is, and picks up a steady rhythm.

After a moment of this, Billie lets out a quiet sigh.

It feels nice enough, with him inside her, as good as with any of her clients who have half an idea of what they’re doing and half a care for her enjoyment. It’s just a slight disappointment after the intense and focused pleasure his fingers and his growling promise had managed to bring. She slides her hand from his shoulder down his arm and wonders if he’s the type to take offense if she helps herself along a little this time.

With a dissatisfied grunt, Daud suddenly pulls out of her before she even finishes the thought, leaning back with his hand on his cock. “Turn around,” he says gruffly. 

She obeys, warily, rising onto her knees and watching over her shoulder. Not all of her clients are so considerate once they have her in this position.

Fingers digging into her hips again, he pulls her close and thrusts back into her from behind. One hand eases its grip to slide up her back to the base of her neck, where he pushes lightly, a gentle pressure urging her down until she drops low on her arms and lets her cheek rest against the cool sheets.

The next thrust, angled just right now, sends a jolt of pleasure arcing through her body, and the one after has her turning her face to muffle her cry, hands twisting in the bedding.

It doesn’t take long, with the head of his cock so consistently brushing up against that spot even she can only occasionally manage to hit, and she’s soon coming just as hard as before, shuddering and biting her lip and gripping so tight her nails leave little indentations on her palms even through the layer of the sheets.

Daud’s movements slow but don’t stop, and a few pleasant aftershocks ripple through her as she recovers her breath. At the edge of her vision, still a little hazy, she sees his hand slip forward and under the pillow on the bed.

“Your bonecharm,” he says, a hint of strain in his voice, and she tenses instinctively for a moment before relaxing and shaking her head at her own silliness. Daud is hardly some Abbey zealot about to turn her in for heresy. “It’s for preventing pregnancy, I assume?”

“Of course,” she says with a breathless little laugh, because what else would a worker at the Golden Cat spend her precious coin on, bartering desperately with some old witch in a back alley for some bit of reassurance to keep beneath her pillow? “It’s always worked for me, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She reaches back, strokes her fingertips teasingly along the back of his thigh. “You can come inside me.”

That’s enough to tip him over the edge. His hand at her waist spasms, fingers digging in a little too hard, and with a low groan and a final jerk of his hips, he spills, hot and fast, inside of her.

He is heavy against her back for a moment before he steadies himself, and he presses a brief kiss to the base of her neck, where his hand had been, before pulling out of her and moving away.

It’s an incongruous bit of sweetness that makes her shudder more than anything before, and she turns her back quickly to avoid meeting his eye.

* * *

Daud actually sleeps for a short while afterward, typical of a man, but it surprises her a little from him. There must be a thousand people who want him dead, and he’s willing to doze off in the bed of a near stranger? She doubts he’s foolish enough to trust her so soon just because they’ve struck a deal.

Curious, she begins to push herself up, the bed dipping and creaking lightly from the motion, and sure enough, she can see a sudden tension in Daud’s arms, a flicker of his eyes beneath the closed lids. You would have to work damn hard to catch someone like him off his guard. It would take more than a lucky shot out of the dark, you would have to really know what you were doing, really know _him_.

How strange that must be, to have the people you trust most be the only thing you have to fear.

Billie shivers a bit with that thought and sits up quickly, reaching for the cigarette case lying on the bedside table. She puts one between her lips and lights it, and when she turns around, Daud is fully awake and watching her. She holds the case out to him, lifting her eyebrow to make the silent offer. He takes one, and she leans in close to light it for him.

There is an unusual mark on his left hand, easy to see now as he holds the cigarette to his mouth. She glimpsed it before and hadn’t been sure then if it was maybe some fresh bruise or old birthmark, but she can now tell it is a very distinct and intricate pattern.

She lets her eyes drift over the rest of his body, bared to her now with the sheets down around his legs. She’s had some dealings with most of Dunwall’s many gangs, and every member she ever met was heavily tattooed, some covered nearly from neck to ankle. Daud’s body is impressively decorated with scar tissue, but there’s not another trace of ink anywhere else.

Billie moves in closer, sets her hand on his knee. “Strange tattoo,” she says, smoke drifting from her lips.

He snorts. “Strange, yes.” He takes a long, slow drag on the cigarette, looks up toward the ceiling as he exhales. “What have you heard about the Whalers?” he asks.

“Ghost stories,” she says with a shrug. Her fingers ease their way up his thigh, tracing old scars. “Untouchable men and women who sold their souls to the Outsider and live in the Void, use its powers to kill for him.”

He laughs softly. “And do you believe any of that?”

Another shrug. “Always sounded like nonsense to me,” she tells him, “but I’ve seen my share of nonsense out there, so who knows?”

“Hm, fair. I won’t say there’s no truth to it at all, but you’ll learn that soon enough.” He nods toward the motion of her hands. “You can already see I’m hardly untouchable, at least.”

She smiles, circling the rough notch of an old bullet wound near his hip. “A few too many of these to be immortal, I think.” She lets her hand drift back down, dragging slowly along the inside of his thigh under the pretense of seeking out more scars. Daud’s face remains impassive, but his cock reacts to the touch, and her smile turns into a grin. “Still alive, though. That’s impressive enough.”

She leans across him to drop her half-spent cigarette into the ashtray at his elbow, letting it sit and smolder, and then wraps her hand around the length of his cock, stroking steadily. Once he’s fully hard again, she ducks down, closing her lips over the head.

His eyes drift closed, chin tipping back, and his hand goes again to the back of her neck. He does not grab or push, though she can feel his fingers tremble from the effort not to.

She almost wishes he would.

She works him slowly, with lips and tongue and gentle scrape of teeth, until a harsh, low sound comes from the back of his throat, and his grip suddenly tightens. “Stop,” he grits out.

She lifts her head, a smirk playing at her lips as she wipes the back of her hand across them. “What?” she asks. “You want to be inside me again?”

“Yes,” he says without any hesitation.

Billie laughs as she sits up, planting a hand at the center of his chest for balance. She reaches out to pluck the stub of a cigarette from his mouth, takes a final drag from it, and snubs it out in the ashtray. “You’re right,” she says, shifting a leg over his hips to straddle him. “That is pretty boring.”

He snorts, bringing his hands up to grasp the backs of her knees. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“That’s all right.” She smiles, eyes closing as she slowly sinks down onto him. “Like I said, it’s a nice change of pace.”

* * *

Daud lingers for a moment, sitting half-dressed at the foot of the bed, and watches as Billie gathers up her clothes, throws on a thin coat against the chill of the Month of Rain, and tucks her few personal belongings into the pockets. She’ll need sturdier clothing soon – he doubts anything she has now will be comfortable once she’s running on rooftops and climbing ventilation pipes – but for now he takes the time to commit the sight of her as she is to his memory.

He won’t touch her again after today. Once they leave here, Billie Lurk will be a Whaler under his command, one he has very high hopes for, and he won’t have anything complicating that. No rumors or whispers among the ranks as she inevitably rises through them. There will already be raised eyebrows at Daud returning so late with her from those few who knew his purpose today, something he’ll have to manage quickly.

Billie turns her head and laughs when she catches him watching. “You’re taking your time for a man who was in such a hurry before.”

She’ll be wearing a mask soon, covering all that bitterness and hurt, the defensive anger and the dry, distant amusement she keeps over top of it all. He imagines he won’t hear her laugh much after this.

Daud stands and reaches for his shirt. “It won’t take me long,” he assures her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The porn ratio definitely went down a little on this chapter. Assassins use Fugue Feast to play cards and talk about their feelings, I guess.

The Fugue bells ring an hour after sunset, and Billie is at his door before the next hour passes, pulling off her hood and mask as she walks in and dropping them unceremoniously onto a chair already stacked high with books and papers. “I saw Thomas on my way over here,” she says, stripping off her gloves to add them to the pile. “What’d he do to deserve sentry duty on a Fugue night?”

“He volunteered for it,” Daud answers, frowning. There was rain earlier in the day, and he hopes none of her things are still wet enough to ruin his papers. “Not everyone enjoys the sort of fun on offer tonight. Some prefer to avoid what they can of the festivities.”

She laughs, grabbing an empty chair and dragging it over to his desk. “Only prissy bores like Thomas and tired old men like you.”

“And yet, here you stand.”

Billie shrugs without actually bothering to answer. “I brought a gift,” she says instead, reaching into her coat. She pulls a bottle of whiskey from one of the deep inner pockets, where it had been visibly weighing down the one side, and sets it proudly on top of his desk, turning it so the label is clearly on display.

He makes a pleased noise low in his throat. It’s decent stuff, not the watered down swill that the Hatters liked to peddle these days. “I suppose I can forgive the insult,” he says drily, and he gestures for her to sit.

She does so with a grin, shedding her thick coat and draping it over the back of the chair on her way down. That done, she stretches her arms above her head, then runs her hands through her hair a few times, shaking it out and smoothing it down after a day spent sweating under a Whaler hood. She keeps it short now for convenience, the ends just barely brushing her chin. It suits her well, but he can still remember when it was longer, thick strands falling past her shoulders, slipping out from under her hood, tangling between his fingers as his hand curled around the back of her neck.

He shakes his head sharply, banishing the rest of that thought before it can begin.

True to his unspoken word, he has not touched her since that night, though Billie has made it clear on occasion that she wouldn’t be opposed to the idea. She’s never pushed or sulked when he failed to respond, but she makes the offer every so often and always gives him ample opportunity to accept. Opportunity he lets slip on by without comment every time.

His reasons for refusing her have changed with the passage of time. Rumors grumbled between the other Whalers no longer concern him. Billie’s skills as an assassin are well-honed and well-respected among his people, and no one would dare question her right to serve as his second, not if they expected to survive such a challenge.

But he knows that she still views sex the same way she does blood or coin – just another piece of the transaction, a thing to be traded away. She uses it as a weapon in her work as easily and naturally as she uses her blade or her bow, gathering information, gaining trust, slipping in close to her targets for the kill. She uses it just as readily to resolve professional conflicts and ease personal tensions, both among her fellow Whalers and in negotiations with rival gangs.

Daud has always been fine with all of this, so long as it gets results and none of it interferes with the work they do. She can do her job in whatever way she sees fit.

But he does not want her bartering with him in that way.

He opens the lower drawer of his desk and pulls out two glass tumblers and a worn deck of cards, the latter of which he slides across to her. Billie shuffles while he pours, and when she sets the cards back in front of him, he obligingly cuts the deck for her, then leans back to watch as she deals for a hand of Nancy.

Billie picks up her cards and frowns at what she sees. She takes a good sip of her whiskey before she begins to put them in order. “Why don’t you ever go out during Fugue?” she asks, fingertips rubbing the corner of one card in contemplation. “I know Thomas has a stick up his ass, but I figure you would enjoy at least a few things going on out there.”

“Used to,” he says with a shrug. He plays his first card, which only deepens Billie’s frown. “I suppose it’s lost some of the charm it had when I was younger. We hardly operate within the laws and customs of the world anyway, so there’s not as much appeal in that kind of freedom.” He nods to the set up between them, the cards and whiskey and conversation. “This is as much a change of pace for us as anything happening out in the city tonight.”

“Hm, it’ll be a real change when I finally beat you at this game.”

He laughs quietly. “We’ll see, Lurk.”

Despite her claim, the hand goes poorly for Billie, and she lets out a long sigh as Daud takes the last trick. He gives her a look, and she just shrugs. “It was a bad deal.”

“You were the dealer.”

The tip of her boot jabs suddenly into his shin, not quite hard enough to really hurt, and he laughs again.

She shakes her head and drains the last of her whiskey, pours herself another while Daud gathers up the cards. She leans back in her chair then, holding the glass by the rim while her other hand goes to her throat to undo the top few buttons of her shirt, loosening the high collar. “So, what’s it like in Serkonos?”

“Hot, usually.”

She rolls her eyes. “The Fugue Feast,” she clarifies. “Do they do anything different down there?”

Daud considers the question in silence, slowly shuffling the deck, taking the time to line up corners and edges with unnecessary care. He hasn’t been back there in many years and Billie knows this, but he also doubts the answer to her question has changed much, not unless the entire culture of the island has managed to change. The Fugue runs on human nature more than tradition, and that is something even more stubborn.

“It’s louder,” he says eventually. “There’s more music, more dancing, more fighting but less killing. More people rutting in the streets instead of bothering to duck into alleys and empty apartments.”

She grins, and it is a wicked look, a slow curving of lips and baring of teeth. “And you?”

He shrugs, keeping his eyes carefully on the cards as he deals. “It hadn’t lost its charm yet then.”

Billie picks up her cards and looks them over, a smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth. She reaches down with her free hand to tug at the straps of her boots, and he hears the dull thud of them hitting the floor before she tucks one bare foot under herself, sitting a little higher in her chair. “I think I’d like to see that,” she says once she’s settled.

“Serkonos?”

“You there in the streets.”

Daud takes a long drink and says nothing to that.

The hand goes again to him, but Billie is unbothered this time, laughing and shrugging as she picks up the cards for the next deal. She shifts in her seat again as she finishes, and he feels another touch against his leg, not the hard edge of her boot this time but the softer press of her bare toes. 

He ignores this easily at first, well used to that kind of unnecessary contact from her, even as she slides her way further upward and slips between his knees to rest her heel on his chair. It’s not until a few moments later, when he feels the deliberate brush along his inner thigh, that he quickly reaches down to stop her, fingers circling around her ankle to keep her still. “Billie,” he says, a warning.

Her look changes, no longer the self-satisfied grin, ever pleased at getting him to react, but something entirely different, unusually serious. “Come on, Daud,” she says with slight tilt of her head. “It’s Fugue Feast.”

He looks away, down at his cards again, while he considers that. The sense of freedom and assurance offered by the Fugue is a false one – a time outside of time, beyond legal repercussions, yes, but certainly not beyond human memory. And they know that better than most. The Whalers always do swift business in the early weeks of a new year, collecting payment from those seeking retribution for what did not happen in those lost hours.

As a protection, it is worthless. As an excuse…

 _The Outsider_ is in his hand this time, black eyes mocking amongst the rats and skulls. It was a poor deal, anyway.

“Alright,” Daud says, and folds.

* * *

Daud unlocks the door at the back of the room and lets Billie slip on past him, eager, it seems, to finally lay eyes on the one small part of their domain he’s always kept closed to her.

As she moves in without pause, he lingers by the doorway and frowns. He surveys his chambers with newly critical eyes and finds them wanting for the first time in all his years inhabiting them. It’s always been a secondary concern to the adjoining office space, where the maps are laid out, portraits pinned up, and killings planned in elaborate detail. This smaller room is merely a place to rest and seek privacy, to sleep, and he does little enough of that that anything beyond basic comfort has rarely ever crossed his mind. 

He can’t help but compare it all now to that previous night. The Golden Cat may strive to emulate elegance and luxury and manage only a sort of desperate gaudiness in the end, but even that seems far more adequate at the moment than his rusting bed frame and thin, narrow mattress.

Billie appears unbothered, as immediately comfortable here as she is in any of the places he calls his own. “Cozy,” she remarks drily, turning in a slow circle to take it all in.

Daud shrugs, closing the door and moving farther into the room. “It’s enough for me.”

“No, really,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve been in much worse and called myself lucky for it.”

“Flattering.”

She grins – “No need to flatter when I already got the answer I want” – and her hands move to the last few buttons of her shirt.

Daud stands near the bed and watches as she slowly undresses, his body held still with restrained eagerness, letting only his eyes roam.

When last he saw her like this, she was soft under his hands – not untouched by the harsh world that had shaped her but not yet equal to the fury that burned within her, not yet the killer she wished to be, the killer he would turn her into. He helped her climb onto the roof of the Golden Cat afterward and was amazed at the lightness of her body.

He is curious how she has changed in the years since. She is more solid now, he knows. He sees her fight and kill each day, sees the power behind her movements, sees how the blood and sweat weigh her clothes down to the hard lines and angles of her body. He wants to put his hands on her again, over her strong calves and thighs and back and arms. He wants to feel muscle shift under skin as they move together, wants to find all the new scars he knows are there, breaking up that old softness, to carefully trace their jagged edges and remember how she earned each one.

There is a whiskey glass still in his hand. He lifts it to his lips and quickly drains the rest of the drink.

Billie catches him at this and grins her vicious grin. “Enjoying the show?” she asks.

“I always do.”

She laughs as she pulls her undershirt over her head and lets it drop to the floor. “Is this what you’re thinking of when you watch me in the practice yard?”

“Sometimes,” he admits, “but not usually.” He considers stopping there, but the headiness of the Fugue and the whiskey still burning at the back of his throat pushes him to add, “Watching you work is a pleasure in its own right.”

She ducks her head, smile softening as she looks away, and he feels himself smirk, suddenly more at ease with the situation. For all the effort she puts into trying to fluster him, she reacts in much the same way to a direct compliment on her skills.

Billie catches him at this, too, and rolls her eyes. She closes the distance between them in two long strides, puts her hands at his shoulders and her foot behind his heel, and she pushes sharply, making him stagger back a step and sit down hard when his legs hit the edge of the bed. It is a cheap move, something simple and basic he taught her early on to gain the upper hand in a fight even as the small, skinny thing she was back then, and not one that would usually work on him, but he would admit to a certain degree of distraction at the moment.

She follows him down before he can quite react, heavy and solid across his lap with her mouth on his. It is not the slow, lingering, calculated kiss of that first time years ago, but a more aggressive and demanding one, teeth scraping and tongue delving deep. He responds in kind, and her hands work eagerly at his clothes all the while.

His own hands stay resting on her hips for a moment before he gives in and indulges that urge to touch her, fingers sliding up to brush over her bared skin, to trace along the hard lines of muscle and rough edges of scars, to dig into the softer spaces in between, drawing little sounds from her against his mouth.

When Billie makes an impatient noise, he leans away and nudges her over, moves his hands back down to loosen her belt and buttons and pull everything off with a few sharp tugs, past her ankles and then dropped over the edge of his bed to the floor. With his hand cradling the back of her calf, another desire of curiosity strikes him, and he dips his head down to press a kiss to the inside of her thigh, just above the knee, and then, open-mouthed, a little higher up.

Billie’s eyes light up at the wordless suggestion, and she eagerly moves back to give him more room, her shoulders bumping up against the side of the bookcase at the foot of his bed.

“I’m somewhat out of practice here,” he tells her as he eases himself down and settles into place between her legs. It’s an understatement; he has to go back quite a few years before hitting the memory of the last time he was in this position.

She laughs, her hands coming to rest at the back of his head. “Hard to mess this one up, as far I’m concerned.”

“How reassuring,” he says drily. Though it is in a way. He knows she tends to seek out other women for this kind of company, and likely most of them are more skilled at this than he is. Lower standards are somewhat comforting.

He dips his head as she laughs again, and as he draws his tongue over her in a slow, broad stroke, he is gratified to hear that sound choked off, replaced immediately by a pleased little moan from low in her throat.

Billie’s hands tighten briefly in his hair, then one moves to brace against the wall as she shifts her position. Her legs slip over his shoulders, heels resting on his back, thighs pressed close enough around his head to muffle the sounds of the room.

He finds he likes the narrowed focus that enforces, concentrating fully on the task at hand, tracing her reactions through her tensing and shuddering and the little sounds of pleasure he can feel more than hear.

He breathes deep and jerks his hips forward almost involuntarily, grinding down against the mattress.

Before long, he recognizes a change in the tremor of her body around him, the tensing of her muscles beneath his hands, the particular hitch of her breath, and he leans back abruptly, pulling away from her before she can quite reach that peak.

Billie groans in dismay, her nails digging into his scalp. “Bastard,” she pants, and he laughs.

Her hands loosen their grip and go to his shoulders instead, and she pushes him over roughly until his back hits the sheets. Her mouth is on his for a brief moment, sucking her own taste from his tongue, and then she is sitting up over him, straddling his hips and pushing the last of his clothing out of her way.

She circles her hand around the base of his cock, strokes him once firmly up and down, and then rolls her hips forward, her slick, wet heat sliding over him.

His eyes slam shut, and he bites down hard on his tongue, just managing to keep silent.

He can hear her laugh, a little breathless, as she repeats the motion a few more times, then rises up on her knees and inches forward to sink down onto him. He opens his eyes again to watch her – her lips parted, head tipping back – as she slowly takes his cock, then closes them again as she leans in to plant a hand on his chest and begins to move. He finds her knee, slides his fingers up her thigh to grip her hip and better feel her rhythm, and does his best to match it.

It doesn’t take her long, as close as he got her before deciding to tease, and soon he feels that particular tremor through her body again, feels her blunt nails scraping roughly across his skin. He does nothing to interrupt this time, merely rides out the peak of her pleasure, enjoys the way she gasps and moans, the stuttering of the once steady rocking of her hips, the way she clenches around him.

It is not quite enough for him though, and he grips her hips harder as she beings to slow. With a grunt, he wraps one arm around her waist and uses the other to push himself up, moving them both until he is half over top of her and has the leverage to thrust into her at his own pace, a few sharp, quick jerks until he can follow her over the edge.

He does not bother to ask the question this time. He can hear the singing of that same bonecharm again from here, no longer stuffed under a pillow but now sewn into the lining of Billie’s coat the room over with the others she’s collected since.

As he rests against her for a moment, catching his breath, he sees her mouth curve into a smirk. “I know,” he says. “Boring.”

Billie laughs. “That’s fine by me.”

With the urgency and movement ended, it takes some amount of shifting to find a way to lie comfortably beside each other in the narrow bed, and still Billie’s hip is pressed to his, her shoulder bumping against him as she stretches her arms above her head with a pleased sigh.

“Isn’t this a better way to spend a Fugue Feast?” she asks as she settles in.

“It has its charms,” he admits.

She rolls onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow so she can glance across the room toward the window. “And it’s still pitch dark outside. Plenty of time left to fill even if it only lasts one night this year.”

“I’m going to need a few minutes first,” he says drily, but he lets his hand drift between her legs, coming to rest on her thigh. There are other things he can do if she’s already so eager again.

But Billie just laughs softly. She sets her arm down across his chest, leaning over him until he can feel the tickle of her breath on his cheek. It’s almost uncomfortably intimate, even after everything else. She always takes her mask off when they speak in private, but her face is rarely quite this close to his own. He’s become accustomed to only seeing her eyes behind dark glass.

Her other hand comes up to brush against his cheek for a moment, and then she carefully presses two fingers to the edge of his scar right above his eye, slowly tracing it all the way down the side of his face. 

He lets it happen, frowning slightly and closing his eyes only briefly as her fingertips cross over the ridge of his brow. “What?” he asks quietly when her hand stops near his chin.

“Always wondered about this one,” she says with a shrug. “You share the rest of your battle scar stories pretty easily, but never a word about this one. I figure I’ll never get as a good a chance to ask as this again.”

His instinct is to snatch her hand away, turn his back to her and say nothing. But it is a Fugue night. He scratches a fingernail across her thigh as he considers how much to say.

“The worst day I’ve lived through and the one that earned me the Outsider’s mark,” he finally allows. “It wasn’t the first time I’d killed or nearly been killed, but something must have caught his eye.” He lifts his left hand for a moment, staring at the black mark on the back of his fist, then lefts it drop with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t tell you what it was, though. I was half-dead and half-blind when he chose to speak to me. Didn’t really feel very _interesting_ at the time.”

Billie is silent for a moment, waiting. Then she tilts her head, giving him a wry smile. “And you’re going to tell me any more than that, are you?”

“No,” he says. He pulls her hand away now, slow and gentle. “It’s already more than anyone else still living knows.”

She laughs softly, squeezing his hand as she leans in to kiss him again. “I guess that’s good enough for me.”

* * *

Daud wakes when the first hints of sunlight creep their way across the room, pleasantly tired and unusually warm, and it does not take long for him to remember the reason for both of those sensations. He eases himself carefully to edge of the bed, doing his best not to wake Billie. It’s hardly his finest moment of stealth, but she’s a deep sleeper, or at least she is after a Fugue night. 

He finds his trousers and pulls them on, then picks through the rest of the mingled pile of clothing to search the pockets for a cigar and something to light it with. That accomplished, he walks to the clouded window and pushes it open to look out into the early morning.

It is quiet but not silent. There is music still in the distance and the occasional shout, but the loudspeakers are all dead on their wires. He can smell a hint of smoke on the wind, but any fires he can see are well on their way to smoldering out. The streets are largely empty of revelers but also free of uniforms. It is a Dunwall nearing the end of Fugue, not yet fully back in the grips of what it claimed to be law and order. 

That strange, false power is nearly at its end. They’ll have contracts within an hour of the bells ringing, will be back to work plotting and killing again before the day is out. Life takes so little time to swing back to its usual patterns.

“Has the city dragged itself back together yet?”

He turns to look across the room. It makes for an appealing image, Billie sitting there naked save for the sheet draped across her lap. Certainly a better view than his narrow, rusting bed typically provides. He spends a moment taking it in before answering her with a shake of his head. “Not quite.”

She puts a hand behind her neck as she stretches, massaging out the soreness from sleeping cramped against another person. “A few more hours, then?” she asks.

“Probably.” He gives the dimly lit city another brief look, then slowly shuts the window on it. “And longer before anyone staggers their way back home.”

She smirks at him as he approaches the bed. “Even Thomas?”

“He takes sentry duty very seriously.”

Billie laughs, leaning forward to snag the cigar from his mouth. She takes a long drag from it and gives him a grin. “Well, then,” she says, smoke spilling from her lips, “I guess we have some time to fill.”

He lets her pull him back down as the last hours of the Fugue tick away around them.


End file.
